BIG UNDERSIDE UPDATE

sorry, it's been a while. i think that weekly patreon posts, at least while it's not my primary form of income, aren't really feasible for me, and i burned myself out trying to do them. here's the new thing: there'll be a patreon post at least once a month, either a dev diary or another piece of writing by me. if there's more than that, there'll be more than that: but that's the manageable baseline i'll commit to

now, onto the exciting thing. i've just finished writing out the rules for the 'arc palette', which means i've totally finished work on CHAPTER 8: CAMPAIGN & PLAY. this leaves only one chapter left, CHAPTER 9: RUNNING THE GAME -- but as that chapter will mostly contain guidance on the philosophy of play that went into designing this game, a few optional rules toys, and a bunch of sample settings, that means that what we have is nearly playtest-complete.

all that i have left to do is to fill out a bunch of tables fleshing out advancement and character creation options, at which point underside will be a fully playable game. i don't want to overpromise, so i'm giving myself two months to do that (and citizen abel two months to put together some digital character keepers -- trust me, you'll need 'em!) -- and setting an official release for the underside playtest edition (name pending ofc) of july 31st, 2025

this playtest edition -- no fancy formatting, no ninth chapter, just a plain set of google docs -- will be available here on my patreon, and if there's any interest i'll also probably make a patreon discord as a place to organize playtests -- i probably won't be running any personally, but i know a lot of people have been excited to play this game and i think getting them all in one place would help me get a lot of useful feedback.

i'm very thankful to everyone who has supported me through this project, even as the scope and timescale of it has expanded, and i can't convey enough how excited i am with the state underside is in right now and what's to come :)